Depth buffer dilation for remote rendering

A head-mounted device (HMD) comprising:

• a display;
• one or more processors;
• and
• one or more computer-readable hardware storage devices storing executable instructions that are executable by the one or more processors to cause the HMD to at least:
• receive, from a remote server device, a color image video stream and a depth buffer stream;
• decode the color image video stream to generate a color image and decode the depth buffer stream to generate a depth buffer, wherein the depth buffer is a modified depth buffer that was previously modified to eliminate non-essential depth discontinuities while preserving essential depth discontinuities, wherein essential depth discontinuities are depth discontinuities located at regions in the depth buffer corresponding to areas in the color image where a second hologram overlaps a first hologram, and wherein non-essential depth discontinuities are depth discontinuities located at regions in the depth buffer corresponding to areas in the color image where either the first hologram or the second hologram borders a non-content far plane;
• for each color pixel in the color image, determine a corresponding depth value included in the depth buffer;
• determine a current position of the HMD;
• and
• using information detailing the HMD's current position in combination with the depth values included in the depth buffer, reproject the color image to cause a perspective embodied by the color image to be modified to correspond to a true perspective that is determined based on the determined position of the HMD.

A method for modifying a depth buffer to eliminate non-essential depth discontinuities in order to use reduced bandwidth for encoding the depth buffer, said method comprising:

• generating a color image comprising a first content region, a second content region, and an overlap region where the second content region overlaps the first content region;
• generating, for the color image, a depth buffer comprising a corresponding depth value for each pixel in the color image, wherein the depth buffer identifies:
• a first set of depth values for the first content region,
• a second set of depth values for the second content region, and
• a third set of depth values for a non-content region included in the color image;
• identifying essential depth discontinuities and non-essential depth discontinuities in the depth buffer, the essential depth discontinuities being depth discontinuities located within the depth buffer at areas corresponding to the overlap region of the color image, the non-essential depth discontinuities being depth discontinuities located within the depth buffer at areas corresponding to borders between the non-content region and the first content region or the second content region;
• while preserving the essential depth discontinuities, modifying the third set of depth values in the depth buffer to eliminate the non-essential depth discontinuities;
• encoding the color image into a color image video stream and encoding the modified depth buffer into a depth buffer stream, wherein using the modified depth buffer facilitates reduced bandwidth usage during said encoding into the depth buffer stream by reducing an amount of data, via elimination of the non-essential depth discontinuities, that is encoded;
• and
• transmitting, to a remotely located head-mounted device (HMD), the color image video stream and the depth buffer stream.